With ten siblings, Adolph Mishkinis had little choice but to leave his Lithuanian village in search of work: 'At about 13 years of age he was urged by his parents to leave home and make his way to the coast to seek employment on a ship, which he succeeded in so doing. ... Adolph reached America and learned to speak English ... Adolph worked with the lumberjacks in Canada for a time, where he serviced and maintained the donkey engines in use there. He joined the American merchant ships and sailed around the world three times and became a third class marine engineer.' After arriving in Australia, in September 1915, he left his ship and joined the AIF.

[...] Adolph Mishkinis was wounded at Ypres and after 27 operations on his head still suffered for years from severe headaches.

[...] When war broke out, Australia started processing flax fibre to manufacture canvas and military webbing. Mishkinis, as his son Vincent remembers, 'noticed that the flax fibres grown in Ballarat were inferior in quality, being grossly discoloured, a dirty grey. He proceeded to experiment with flax, firstly growing it in our back-yard, then on a friend's property.' From Vincent's description, it is obvious that Adolph was drawing on the centuries-old technology he would have observed in Lithuania as a child. And the results were impressive: 'A bundle of fibres held by outstretched hand shimmered in the sun like a young girl's blonde hair. His sample was entered in the Melbourne Show and won 1st Prize.' Unfortunately, however, Adolph was annoyed at not receiving his expected financial reward from the government and destroyed 'his notes on his work with flax in disgust'.